Low blood sugar

I noticed that everyday from 2-4 pm my symptoms were always so much worse at this time and I couldn't tell why. I thought that maybe it was my antibiotics because I eat them around 11 am. I finally checked my blood sugar around this 2-4 pm range when my symptoms were bad and my blood sugar was in the 87-92 range. This is about 1-2 hours after eating my first meal. I know that its supposed to be over 100 a couple hours after my first meal. I don't understand why it stays so low even after I eat. Is there anyway to fix this? Usually it passes after I eat my second meal but I still go through this dreaded 2 hour Terror everyday. I know that sugar is bad for lyme and I don't eat any sugar at all, I recently started eating 1 banana everyday but that's all the sugar I eat. Should I eat something sugary before I go through this period? Or does anyone know why this is happening?

bear in mind the 100 figure will be based on standard western diet - which is high in processed carbs - like bread, pastry, pasta, rice, soda, sugary deserts etc

if you are eating a healthier diet you will likely have less of a peak - and more spread out - as thats the way digestion of low sugar or low processed carb diets work - so it cold be that your numbers are entirely normal for a careful diet - for what its worth - the guidance here just say normal " up to 140mg / dL" or under 200 2hrs after meals - not that below 100 is a problem

https://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes_care/blood-sugar-level-ranges.html

as points of reference - i have a type 1 diabetic friend that can operate OK on around 30 before he has any real low blood sugar symptoms - and mine is around 80 most of the time on a strict Ketogenic Diet and i can workout better at that than when eating carbs

i suspect something else entirely is going on

but you could test this by eating a few slices of white bread with your next meal and see what happens to you post prandial blood glucose

Post Edited (Garzie) : 10/1/2021 8:30:08 AM (GMT-6)

Fasting glucose is 94

Agreed. If fasting was low then didn’t go up too much, might be concerned. And as mentioned, it also depends on what you eat. My blood sugar after eating rarely gets above 112 and hour or two after a meal.

My fasting (morning) blood sugar is around 5.0 (or approx 90) depending on what units.

94 isn’t anything to worry about.

My husband would kill for that (type 2 diabetes diagnosed a few years ago)

i know what you are saying - but i still think the numbers are not far enough out of range for it to be a strict blood sugar issue.

for example. many people in this community feel worse after they eat for a couple of hours - i do myself. it could be more of an immune mediated reaction.

I used to have this problem. My insulin levels were slightly low. Not so low as to cause extremely high blood sugar (although it would occasionally get somewhat high) but low enough to cause poor glucose uptake when my blood sugar was normal. I felt really sluggish and achy because my muscles weren't getting enough glucose.

Metformin kinda worked, but it takes several hours to work, such that if I took metformin in the morning, I wouldn't start to feel better until mid-afternoon. And if my blood sugar was still low then I would have to raise it with hydrocortisone.

Ultimately I needed to fix my pancreas, which I did by taking valproate, a drug which stimulates growth of the pancreatic islets. This also is not a fast process. When I took the depakote, it just messed with my blood sugar and initially made things a bit more unstable. Valproate also is quite toxic to borrelia and caused a herx. After a few weeks of this I got sick of the herxing and quit taking it, and my glucose homeostatis was still crap.

about a month or two later, my blood sugar suddenly started to get a lot better, and it wasn't just more insulin but also more glucagon which would keep my blood sugar from getting too low.

The basic explanation for this (which has largely been confirmed in animal models) is that it takes 2-3 months for a pancreatic islet cell to fully mature. A few weeks of valproate will start the process, but it takes a couple months for the newly formed cells to transform into the different cell types which produce glucagon (alpha cells) and insulin (beta cells).

If you don't want to take valproate, extreme fasting can also initiate this process, but I found that taking a pill once a day was easier than this extreme lifestyle change. However, people have had success with fasting (and this has also been studied in animals).

People often say they beat diabetes with diet and exercise, but for me that was definitely not happening since I was too sick with Lyme, so instead of diet and exercise, I found that it is totally possible to 'cheat' and do it with drugs.

Surprisingly, the improvement in my blood sugar has lasted for several years now, and it did not just go back to how bad it was before.